“Light-duty trucks are getting taller in stance making it difficult for people under 5 feet 8 inches to access top-opening side bins,” said Orta. “Although compact trucks are more economical, when a mobile data terminal is installed, the cab interior is more cramped. Also, compact trucks are less comfortable for larger workers or those who are 6 feet or taller.”

Work trucks, over the years, have evolved into offices on wheels. To fulfill this mission, trucks are equipped with more in-cab devices, such as mobile data terminals for job-site reporting, routing, and work orders. These devices are creating a cramped cab environment, restricting driver movement and raising ergonomic issues. Also, as more woman drivers enter the work force, shorter stature employees sometimes cannot work in large trucks because of the increased brake/accelerator pedal distance, even with the seats moved completely forward.

Growing of Americans
Under OSHA regs, an employer must provide a workplace (which includes work vehicles) free from recognized hazards. Driver-related ergonomic issues can lead to Workers’ Comp claims, which are on the rise for truck fleets. Contributing to increased complaints are less-than-ergonomic upfitting decisions, which sometimes results in expensive litigation. Fleets often find themselves defending upfit specifications against negligence allegations that result from pushing, pulling, lifting, or bending injuries. These are expensive injuries. For instance, the average Workers’ Comp cost for a pushing/pulling injury is $10,175, while the average cost for a lifting/bending incident is $8,989.

Contributing to the increase in fleet-related ergonomic issues is the “growing of Americans,” said Orta. When originally developed, GVW calculations were based on a driver’s average weight of 150 lbs. However, most of us today would be hard pressed to locate many 150-lb. employee drivers. The expanding girth of American drivers is creating unanticipated ergonomic issues. “When seated, the most important feature is the ability of the driver to adjust the seat and steering column to allow easy access to instrument panel controls, along with maintaining good visibility of the road and the dashboard,” said Orta. “Nowadays, many employees find themselves sitting much closer to the steering wheel, even with the seat pulled fully back.” As an aside, seating is an ergonomic “mine field.” An estimated 40 percent of all truck drivers suffer from chronic back problems.

An easy solution is to spec larger trucks. However, this ergonomic quick-fix is often contrary to corporate fleet goals, such as reducing fuel spend and minimizing greenhouse gas emissions, said Orta. However, when employees are assigned a small pickup, their in-cab work space is reduced. A smaller pickup also means, by default, a smaller payload. One benefit to small pickups is improved drivability. Some younger employees, in particular, prefer driving compact trucks because of past familiarity. When assigned a larger truck, there is a correlated increase in backing incidents due to inaccurate gauging of distance.

“Buying vehicles is a challenge,” said Orta. “You can set your fleet to a bell curve, in terms of what employees can operate, and then deal with the exceptions on either end. But the result is after-the-fact modifications, such as adding a step or swapping a driver from a large truck to a small truck or vice versa,” said Orta. “We are probably only seeing 10 percent of the ergonomic concerns. Decisions are made in the field to modify vehicles without people ever knowing. It is not until there is an issue that it is brought to the surface, such as when an accident occurs or someone complains of a back or neck problem,” added Orta.

Bottom-Line Impact of Ergonomics
Field managers should regularly inspect vehicles and upfitted equipment to ensure safe working conditions. These guidelines should also require employees to report any equipment failure or damage. Likewise, a fleet manager must work closely with drivers to analyze normal work processes. For instance, this may identify actions that can lead to injury, such as repeatedly having to climb into the rear of a service body truck for parts or equipment.

“As employees go about their day to perform planned activities that often contain unforeseen variables, they should strive to main-tain a high level of awareness with respect to their environment and how they personally interact with the tools that they use, which include the vehicles they drive,” said Orta.

Ergonomics is also an accident avoidance issue. Poor ergonomics reduces driver comfort, which increases fatigue, a key contributor to preventable accidents. In the final analysis, resolving ergonomic issues can have a significant impact on your company’s bottom line by reducing Workers’ Comp costs, improving driver productivity, and reducing fatigue-induced operator errors.

Market Trends

The recent tax law changes created a problem for employers who use a non-accountable vehicle reimbursement plan. Negative feedback has some companies reconsidering the viability of offering company-provided vehicles to help key employees mitigate the adverse impact of eliminated tax deduction.

A truck’s total cost of ownership (TCO) covers a specific range of expense variables, regardless of the make or model. The four lifecycle categories that influence TCO are fixed costs, operating expenses, incidental costs, and depreciation/resale value. A key factor that drives these lifecycle categories is a vehicle’s service life.

Most in procurement take the position that fleet’s primary responsibility is to buy assets and services, which annually can range from millions to tens of millions of dollars in expenditures. This amount of corporate spend requires it be managed by someone with superb negotiation skills and proven procurement acumen.

If you want to provide added value to your company, you need to view fleet as a business and not simply an aggregation of assets to be managed cost-effectively. The fastest way to improve your bottom line is to increase fleet utilization, which increases the productivity of each individual truck.

Blog: Vocational trucks are susceptible to being targeted for staged accidents, which involves maneuvering an unsuspecting employee driver into an intentional crash in order to make a false insurance claim or to file a lawsuit against the driver’s employer.

If you think being a fleet manager is stressful, try being a Navy SEAL. Former Navy SEAL Robert O'Neill, best known for claiming to have shot Osama bin Laden, recently wrote a new book entitled, “The Operator.”

Conventional wisdom in the fleet market is often wrong. If we roll back the calendar, the conventional wisdom about fuel prices was that there would be ebbs and flows in price per gallon rates, but the overall price trajectory would trend upward. The flaw with conventional wisdom is that it only works when no new variables are inserted into future projections. A case in point is the shale oil revolution, which now has experts predicting oil prices will remain flat for the foreseeable future.

Summer is a busy time in fleet. There’s an abundance of next-model-year OEM fleet meetings, new-model intros, and industry conferences, which offer ample opportunities to “talk fleet” with the movers and shakers of our industry. If you want to know what's happening in the fleet market, you need to talk with fleet managers -- lots of them.

Senior management exerts intense pressure on fleet managers to control and/or reduce vehicle acquisition and operating expenses. To accomplish this, a fleet managers can pursue three different cost-control strategies — cost savings, cost deferral, or cost avoidance. In order to implement a successful cost-control strategy you need to institutionalize the mechanisms to curb money-wasting behaviors.

To be successful on a sourcing team, you need to be open-minded about exploring all available service channels and partners. However, open-minded doesn’t mean being open-headed. You must listen and entertain new ideas, but also temper such a practice and attitude with pragmatism and knowledge.

In the long run, technology will exert inexorable downward pressure on overall fleet size and will eliminate altogether the need for some fleet vehicles. Despite this, fleet management will survive, albeit in a smaller capacity, and, most likely, in a completely different form than what we know today.